The only source of light in the room is Lane’s laptop monitor. The screen houses a sparse word document. Centered at the top of the page in size fourteen Times New Roman bold read the words Baby Meetings. Beneath this title, there are three bullet points. The first line reads “Guy sets up meetings between babies.” Next, “How is this self consistent?” Finally, “An app in the future for babies???” After feverishly writing this final line, Lane’s fingers had been static on the keyboard for the last hour. He couldn’t remember the last time he blinked. The screen mocked him. Yet, he woke up inspired. He could not remember his dreams, but he awakened thinking the words “guy sets up meetings between babies” and he ran to the laptop sitting on the dining room table, certain that this was the one. This was the idea which he would see to its completion and it would be good and worthwhile and important and serious. But a story is more than an idea. Things need to happen. There needs to be some planning. Who gives a shit about an amazing idea like Baby Meetings if nothing happens?
Lane blinks and refocuses his thoughts. The story takes place in the future. It has to. Obviously. Lane thinks, Baby Meetings needs to take place in the future because that’s the only way I can come up with a self-consistent scenario in which babies meet one another without resorting to some magical realism bullshit. Who has time for magical realism? No serious readers who need serious stories which address serious issues and raise serious points. No, Baby Meetings obviously takes place in the future because I can extrapolate some future technology based on current trends and simultaneously make some sort of commentary on the current state of society. Two birds with one stone. Serious shit. Me, a serious writer. Baby Meetings might even be ahead of its time. It might do more in a single short story than anyone who reads short stories could possibly imagine.
Lane’s eyes widen as he realizes an issue in his world building. Lane ruminates, OK so in this future society, babies are implanted in whatever the future version of a cell phone is. An implant in their brains which augments reality and operates through electrical brain activity. Telepathic phone calls and internet access, in a nutshell. The implants can translate baby thoughts as well. Because those thoughts are also electrical impulses. But doesn’t this raise questions on the nature of language? Isn’t this story about a guy who sets up meetings between babies? It’s not some deep philosophical treatise on the origin of language and how it relates to thought. Or is it? Wow. Baby Meetings is pretty deep. There’s a lot going on. No wonder I woke up so inspired that I had to write down the title before I even had the morning piss. But back to the issue at hand. If in this future, everyone including babies has some sort of neural, internet linked implant that allows for telepathic communication, then who is the guy setting up meetings between the babies? Fuck.
Wait.
No.
Of course!
He’s the guy who made the app which facilitates the meetings between babies. He’s the genius who came up with the idea for Baby Meetings. Because Baby Meetings is also the name of the app. Obviously.
Lane’s fingers remain motionless over the keyboard as his satisfaction begins enveloping him and his mind races.
So I guess the guy doesn’t exactly facilitate every meeting between each pair of babies. That was the original idea. Smaller scale. A guy who personally sets up each individual meeting of each pair of babies. And there’s certainly still something to that idea. That’s the indie movie version of the now Summer Blockbuster Baby Meetings. Ideas have to start somewhere. And the benefit of a short story as opposed to an actual multimillion dollar movie franchise is that I can write a short story while sitting naked at my dining room table. I’ll do it for free. No boardroom meetings. No executives to appease. No insurance to purchase. No studio space to rent. Money, fame, artistic accolades, sure, it might come later, but right now I don’t need to be bogged down by scale. No, I don’t need to plan a budget to shoot the five minute opening scene of the babies being implanted with neural links which takes several months to film. It’s much easier than that when I write it. In fact, I can write the words, “In the future, babies are implanted with a chip in their brains which augments their reality and allows them to communicate with other people telepathically and connect to the internet.” See? Look at that. That took ten seconds to write. No months of re-shoots for a scene which gets left on the cutting room floor. No producer breathing down my neck. No producer with no artistic vision and integrity. A total asshole. A buffoon. He would never understand serious work. It’s not his job. His job is to convert serious art into a consumable product. Fucking asshole. But I’ll probably need his help securing funding for the inevitable movie version of Baby Meetings. Of which I will have final cut, obviously. Because I describe my vision so clearly and inform the Hollywood producer that the movie is even about him. He has a part in my movie. And really the movie is about all of us. It’s about so much more, even. The producer is ecstatic. The producer informs me that he has a new lease on life, just hearing about the movie version of my hit short story. The producer tells me he recently bought a .44 magnum handgun which he keeps right here, in the left top drawer of his wraparound mahogany desk, and he was planning on shooting himself through the roof of his mouth at some point in the near future, probably on a Sunday, but not anymore, not now that he has read my short story and met me in person and heard my pitch for the movie version of my serious short story. He’s going to stop seeing his mistress and call his estranged son and stop drinking soda and go for walks every day all because of hearing the pitch for the movie version of Baby Meetings. Damn it’s good.
Beneath Lane’s latest sentence “‘In the future, babies are implanted with a chip in their brains which augments their reality and allows them to communicate with other people telepathically and connect to the internet.’” Lane writes “conflict?”
Lane’s fingers return to their resting position on the keyboard. His index fingers caress the protrusions on the F and J keys. He hopes his laptop is as passionate about his short story as he is. He’s sure she is. He knows it. With the same certainty he felt waking up this morning thinking the words “guy sets up meetings between babies” and knowing this was the beginning of something good and worthwhile and important and serious, Lane knows that his laptop likes him and likes his story. Lane is grateful for the laptop’s cooperation and positive feedback.
Lane’s eyes refocus on the laptop screen. Lane stares at the blinking cursor directly to the right of the question mark written after the word “conflict?” Lane sighs. His eyes drift from the blinking cursor to the bottom right of the screen, and for the first time since waking, he sees the time. 4:15 AM. In his haste to germinate his good and worthwhile and important and serious idea and write an outline for probably the most important and serious short story of the century, Lane realizes he has barely gotten any sleep. He assumed he woke in the morning and he would write all through the day and ignore any phone calls from his boss because what he was working on was so good and worthwhile and important and serious and would net him more money than his current employment at a small advertising agency could ever possibly provide. And it is so much more important. For him and everyone else. Really his boss would end up thanking him and possibly even apologizing for all the instances in which he did not take Lane’s workplace suggestions. Candy for lunch on Fridays. A maximum number of bathroom breaks allowed per day. No more hiring attractive people, to name a few. How could one be expected to care about a day job when one has awoken with some kind of phrase from the depths of...something. The universal unconscious? His own subconscious? Some kind of telepathic message from the future? Something from one of his past lives? Lane resumes staring at the blinking cursor as he finds his mind’s attention circling around the concept of “conflict.” He sees the word CONFLICT as capitalized block letters in the center of a toilet drain, unmoving. The cyclone of water enshrines the word and does not proceed down the drain. The water simply circles the word. Lane sees a miniature version of himself on a miniature surfboard surfing along the water circling the word CONFLICT. Or maybe the toilet is giant and Lane is regular sized on a regular sized surf board. Impossible to say.
A knock at the door rouses Lane. He runs back into his bedroom to throw on a t shirt and shorts. Lane walks to his front door and peers through the peephole. A woman stands holding a baby. It’s too dark to discern any of her features. Lane reaches for the doorknob but hesitates--what is a woman holding a baby doing knocking on his door this early in the morning? But then again, it’s just a woman with a baby. How bad could it be? And one of her arms is compromised holding the baby. There’s no way I couldn’t kick this woman’s ass, if necessary, Lane muses. I deserve anything she does to me, Lane decides. He opens the door.
The woman’s free hand is mid-gesticulation. She appears in the middle of a sentence but makes no sound. The light from inside the house pours through the open portal and reveals that this woman has no face. There are no features. A blank canvas of skin. Lane stares at the gesticulating, faceless woman. Lane feels a sense of borderline deja vu. Somehow this all feels familiar. The sense of familiarity creeps backward and Lane suddenly feels almost certain that he’s already written Baby Meetings. In fact, he might have already written it several times. The conflict will come to him. It has to. Because it already has. Lane looks at the baby in the woman’s arms. The baby has Lane’s grandmother’s face. Not that the baby looks like his grandmother, the face is the face of Lane’s grandmother, mid twenties, before Lane ever knew her, only seen in photographs, shrunk to fit on the skull of a six month old baby, but his grandmother nonetheless. She stares into Lane’s eyes. She is mouthing some word, noiselessly, over and over. It looks like “here” or “hair” or “hare” or “care” or “are.” Lane is uncertain.
Lane’s house and the woman and the baby dissolve into a new scene. Lane is on a beach. The water is dark, nearly black. The sky is grey, featureless. Impossible to tell the time of day. In front of Lane lies a beached humpback whale. A third of its body, the tail end closest to the water, is buried in sand. Lane runs to the whale and starts digging at the sand with his hands. Lane doubts he can push the beast back into the ocean, but he feels an overwhelming urge to try. Lane shovels handful after handful of sand away from the whale’s body. The work is monotonous, slow. The sound of the waves is menacing, a challenge. Hours pass, and Lane’s progress becomes visible. As Lane continues, the scent of decay overtakes the salt in the air. Lane stops digging when he reveals gaping holes in the whale’s body. Holes with no end. Holes darker than the ocean water. Holes which reek. This whale is dead. Who knows how long this whale has been dead. Lane’s mind races. Why was the whale partially buried? Did someone else try to bury it? Why did they stop? Where are they now? Was it the ocean? Doesn’t seem implausible. The whale could have been long dead in the ocean, then washed ashore by the waves, then partially buried in sand as the tide rose. Should I continue and try to push the whale into the water? I probably can’t. Then why did I start in the first place? It felt obvious. It felt like the obvious, correct thing to do. But if someone else buried the whale in the first place, certainly still a possibility, did they have the same feeling? Did they also feel some overwhelming, obviously correct urge to bury the whale? Which of us is correct? What if it was the ocean?
The sound of Lane’s alarm clock in his bedroom is loud enough to wake him. Lane’s head rolls off the laptop keyboard and he looks up at the screen. Baby Meetings is completed. Not just the outline, but there is an entire manuscript, formatted and all, already completed. Lane glances around furtively. No faceless mother. No grandma baby. No one else. Just Lane. Just Lane dreaming and rolling his head around on his keyboard producing a perfect, typo-free manuscript. Obviously.
Lane reads his work. It’s good. It’s better than he ever could have suspected. The science fiction future scenario is totally self consistent. The commentary on contemporary society is biting, cutting edge, important, not overbearing. The humor is flawless, appropriate for all ages, transcends time and culture. There is a conflict. Characters are three dimensional, flawed, grow. Lane reveals more about his innermost feelings than he ever thought possible, and by doing so, he also reveals something about each and every one of us to each and every one of us. This is good. This is worthwhile. This is important. This is serious. Lane weeps.
Lane exports the document and prepares an email for fiction@newyorker.com. The New Yorker website explains that it takes up to ninety days to read a submission. If Lane hasn’t heard back from the publication in three months, then his submission will not be published, and Lane will not receive a rejection email. Ghosted. Floating in the void. Lane is undeterred. Lane’s work is good and worthwhile and important and serious. If for some reason The New Yorker will not publish my story, then whoever reads my submission will be transformed. Whoever reads my story, regardless of the bureaucracy and oversight preventing their publishing of my good and worthwhile and important and serious work, will be forever changed and will go out of their way to disseminate my work to the rest of the New Yorker staff, changing them all for the better. My work will lead to a coup within the entire New Yorker staff should it go unpublished, of this Lane is certain. A restructuring of the entire New Yorker staff and The New Yorker’s relationship with fiction, and for that matter, contemporary society, because what is the distinction between fiction and the real world, Lane thinks, is the worst case scenario. At the end of the day, The New Yorker is a stepping stone or a road block. A small delay in transforming the world for the better. Lane clicks send. He is calm.
At work, Lane is unfocused. Time is viscous, heavy. Lane refreshes his email every thirty seconds. His boss asks what’s wrong. Lane tells him nothing. Lane wants to tell him that soon he will be thanking him. Soon he will feel the massive burden of being a person in an uncaring universe lifted from his shoulders. Soon he will feel better every single day. But he doesn’t say any of this. He recognizes that it would be inappropriate. Not right now. Not until his work is published or spread through the underground network of New Yorker staff members who recognize the importance of his work. Lane shudders as he realizes that The New Yorker is probably not incentivized to publish good and worthwhile and important and serious work. Such work would alleviate so much confusion and suffering in the world that established power structures are unlikely to survive. Extant power structures feed off the current state of the world. They turn art into products. Fuck them. But also Lane hopes they like his story. Lane thinks about the conflict of Baby Meetings he wrote with his head in his sleep. He weeps.
Lane takes the rest of the week off work and sits naked in front of his laptop. He refreshes his inbox every thirty seconds. He does not eat. Bathroom breaks are sparse and perfunctory. Occasionally Lane reads the ending of his story. He is brought to tears each time. On the third sleepless night, Lane receives an email. It is from fiction@newyorker.com. This is sooner than expected. The New Yorker must be eager to publish my piece. Obviously. Of course. The subject reads “On Baby Meetings.” Lane opens the email.
Dear Mr.Black,
Thank you for the opportunity to read your short story Baby Meetings. Here at The New Yorker, we take pride in showcasing good, worthwhile, important and serious work. We are glad to introduce new creative talent into the world. We constantly strive to provide a voice to the voiceless, opportunities to share as of yet untold perspectives, and a platform for groundbreaking creative endeavors. It is with the upmost empathy and sincerity we must inform you that your piece has not been accepted for publication. Ordinarily, we do not send rejection letters. This time is different. The intern who read your piece has been hospitalized. Her ailment is unknown, but she was found collapsed at her desk with your submission open on her monitor. My supervisor told me to include that detail. My supervisor began reading your piece and vomited on the head of the collapsed intern. I decided myself to include that detail. It was deemed in the office that no one else should read your piece, but curiosity got the better of me. So I read it. And I’ve been bed ridden and lost my sense of smell and I can no longer recall much of my childhood. Describing your piece as incoherent gibberish is an insult to gibberish. What is wrong with you? Your work is blasphemous. Ghastly. Vile. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. The polar opposite of serious art. Less than garbage. Garbage typically being the remnants of something once with utility. Your writing has no utility. Perhaps as an exemplar of how exactly not to write something. Not one worthwhile sentence. No ideas which have not already been explored and to which it has been deemed not constructive to return. No commentary on the human condition. No real characters. No conflict. You are swine. You are filth. I have filed a police report. I’m not sure if you have broken any laws, but I want this on some record. The company has also filed a restraining order against you and you may not set foot within one thousand feet of this office. You should not be allowed in front of a keyboard. You should be locked up. You shouldn’t read or write again, for the sake of everyone else on the planet. May the rest of your days be filled with the same pain and loss which I am experiencing right now. I hope your hair falls out too, but presumably you’re already bald. And ugly.
Sincerely,
The New Yorker Underwriting Department
Lane’s eyes unfocus and he adjusts his weight as the screen becomes a white blur. Lane recalls videos he’s seen of explosions in slow motion. But maybe the videos were not filmed in slow motion. Maybe Lane just remembers the videos being in slow motion but what Lane watched were actually explosions filmed at normal speed. Maybe Lane’s brain is interpolating frames. Maybe Lane is an expert on explosions. Maybe Lane is imagining realistic explosions, having seen enough real explosions, to imagine a fake explosion with ease. Maybe there is a real explosion happening somewhere on Earth, right now, Lane thinks. Maybe I’m imagining that exact explosion. Maybe my imagination is creating in the real world that exact explosion.
Fuck The New Yorker. I don’t need it. Everything they do is a lie. Really if my piece were published in The New Yorker, everyone would think it was a lie. Because The New Yorker is known for publishing frivolous, dumb lies. Not good and worthwhile and important and serious art. Really this is a blessing. Obviously. I have the internet, Lane thinks. I have access to every person in the world. Living and dead. As of yet unborn. Ready and willing. Eager. Seeking some solace from the cold and uncaring universe. Everyone. Champing at the bit for something good and worthwhile and important and serious. All of us. Me connected with everyone. But also outside of everyone. Connected to something I don’t know. The dead whale. The vessel for some kind of transcendent art like Baby Meetings. Could it have come to anyone? Was someone else burying the whale? Was someone else on the other side of the ocean? Were there more whales in the ocean? Other creatures? Lane weeps.
Lane looks up as his ceiling dissolves and a pair of giant hands appear in the sky and reach down towards him. The hands wrap around Lane’s torso and he is hoisted through the air. Lane is leaned over something massive, invisible. One of the hands begins patting him gently on his back as the other hand holds him up. Lane hears voices faraway, as if recorded through a telephone with a tube held to the speaker. The hand pushes a button on Lane’s spine. Lane’s mind becomes a sea of gray. Wordless. Something familiar. The hands place Lane in a crib. He opens the app Baby Meetings with a wordless thought. Lane weeps.
Babies think about explosions all the time. OK, maybe not. But me, the writer, made it so. Just now. And now we agree. We’re on the same page (haha.) All of us were babies. All of us were thinking about explosions all the time at one point. All of us. You and me and Lane. You the reader. Probably a human. But who knows what the future has in store. Me, the writer. Me, the narrator. Distinct from me the writer. Distinct from me the person. But also me. But not. Those words serving as the distinction. Your brain serving as the distinction. My brain a distinction. Your memory different from the written words. The written words different from the stuff in my brain. The stuff in my brain different from the stuff in the narrator’s brain. The things in Lane’s brain different from the things in my brain. But maybe not. Does Lane have a brain? I write the words, “Lane thinks” and now Lane has a brain and thinks. Can he think about anything that I (the writer) have not already thought about? We (you and me and Lane) are in the space where Lane has a brain and you read about it and it’s not me, the writer or me the narrator, but it’s part of me, the writer, not the narrator, maybe. I’m (the writer) pretty sure it’s not me. I (the writer) think there’s some space where we understand each other forever. You and me. Maybe Lane too. I think it exists. I think it might be boring. I think we might be in a better place. I know we are, actually. You and me and Lane right now. No better place we could possibly be. Laughing is serious and important and worthwhile and good and I can’t imagine or remember or write anything better for us.